“No. What?”
“She says she saw King last night. She couldn’t sleep; and by-and-by, happening to look out of bed, she saw him standing there. He was looking very solemn, and did not speak. She turned to awake papa, in spite of the way he goes on ridiculing such things, but when she looked next King had gone. I wish he was buried, Johnny; I shouldn’t think he could come back into the house then. Should you?”
“He’s not in it now—in that sense. It’s all imagination.”
“Is it! I should like you to have been in my bed, instead of me; you’d have seen whether it was imagination or not. Do you suppose his heavy arm across me was fancy?”
“Well, he does not come in here. Let us go to sleep. Good-night, Dan.”
Dan lay still for a good bit, and I was nearly asleep when he awoke me sobbing. His face was turned the other way.
“I wish you’d kill me, Johnny.”
“Kill you!”
“I don’t care to live any longer without King. It is so lonely. There’s nobody now. Fred’s getting to be almost a man, and Toby’s a little duffer. King was best. I’ve many a time snubbed him and boxed him, and I always put upon him; and—and now he’s gone. I wish I had fallen down instead of him.”
“You’ll get over it, Dan.”